No abstract

Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) is a promising non-invasive therapeutic modality. Compared to photo-inspired therapy, SDT provides many opportunities and benefits, including deeper tissue penetration, high precision, less side effects, and good patient compliance. Thanks to the facile engineerable nature of nanotechnology, nanoparticles-based sonosensitizers exhibit predominant advantages, such as increased SDT efficacy, binding avidity, and targeting specificity. This review aims to summarize the possible mechanisms of SDT, which can be expected to provide the theoretical basis for SDT development in the future. We also extensively discuss nanoparticle-assisted sonosensitizers to enhance the outcome of SDT. Additionally, we focus on the potential strategy of combinational SDT with other therapeutic modalities and discuss the limitations and challenges of SDT toward clinical applications.

Incorporation of T and T contrast material in one nanosystem performing their respective MR contrast role and simultaneously serving as an efficient drug delivery system (DDS) has a significant potential application for clinical diagnosis and chemotherapy of cancer. However, inappropriate incorporation always encountered many issues, such as low contact area of T contrast material with water-proton, inappropriate distance between T contrast material and water molecule, and undesirable disturbance of T contrast material for T imaging. Those issues seriously limited the T or T contrast effect. In this work, we developed a yolk-like FeO@GdO nanoplatform functionalized by polyethylene glycol and folic acid (FA), which could efficiently exert their tumor targeted T-T dual-mode MR imaging and drug delivery role. First, this nanoplatform possessed a high longitudinal relaxation rate (r) (7.91 mM s) and a stronger transverse relaxation rate (r) (386.5 mM s) than that of original FeO (268.1 mM s). Second, cisplatin could be efficiently loaded into this nanoplatform (112 mg/g) and showed pH-responsive release behavior. Third, this nanoplatform could be effectively internalized by HeLa cells with time and dosage dependence. Fourth, the FA receptor-mediated nanoplatform displayed excellent T-T dual mode MR contrast enhancement and anticancer activity both in vitro and in vivo. Fifth, no apparent toxicity for vital organs was observed with systemic delivery of the nanoplatform in vivo. Thus, this nanoplatform could be a potential nanotheranostic for tumor targeted T-T dual-mode MR imaging and chemotherapy.